BODY: Senate Democrats batted aside
attempts to phase out subsidies for sugar and grain Wednesday in their struggle
to update federal farm programs before Congress leaves town for the year.
"This farm bill needs to get done," Sen.
Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said during daylong Senate floor debate on amendments.
Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, is shepherding a
five-year farm bill in hopes of a final vote as soon as today.
On Wednesday, the Senate defeated a proposal by Sen.
Richard Lugar, R-Ind., that sought to double spending on food stamps while
reducing crop and cotton subsidies.
Lugar said crop
subsidies totaling billions of dollars encourage farmers to overproduce and keep
the prices they receive for their grain and cotton at two-decade lows.
He also decried the fact that 8 percent of the nation's
farmers receive 47 percent of government subsidies.
Harkin defended his bill as a careful balancing act aimed at helping
farmers across the country.
Lugar said senators were
being too parochial and had the attitude of "I can be a statesman somewhere
else, but not when it comes to sugar or peanuts or tobacco or even corn."
The Senate killed Lugar's proposal 70-30. Harkin and Sens.
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., voted against Lugar's plan.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., voted in favor.
Hagel has
expressed sympathy for Lugar's argument and has suggested the Senate could work
early next year on a farm bill that might extend more help to
family farmers.
Harkin also defeated a challenge by
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., seeking to wean growers of sugar beets and sugar cane
from federal subsidies that Gregg said cost taxpayers $ 1.9 billion a year.
The measure would have affected about 500 western Nebraska
farmers who grow sugar beets, according to Nelson's office. He and Hagel voted
against Gregg's amendment, as did Harkin and Grassley. The sugar subsidy
phase-out was defeated 71-29.
A debate over the main
Republican alternative, providing lower subsidies and more crop insurance, was
expected today.
Farm groups are pushing the Senate to
finish work on its farm bill this week and to work for a
compromise with the House, which passed a different farm bill
in October.
They want Congress to send the legislation
to President Bush before Christmas.
Even though the
existing farm bill doesn't expire until October 2002, farm
groups want to capture money set aside earlier this year in the budget. They
fear losing the funds next year to the war on terrorism.
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